Chapter One


Robert Magellan stood on the front steps of his Tudor-style mansion and looked over the crowd gathered on the paved circular drive that was wide enough to accommodate three vehicles.

“I want to be able to park three cars across,” he’d told the contractor, and that’s exactly what he got.

Today there were people, not cars, lining the driveway.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Robert’s personal assistant and right hand, Susanna Jones, asked from just inside the front door.

“It’s a great idea,” he assured her.

“You’ve always avoided the press,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but this time I have something important to say.”

“There were those who thought you might have had something important to say when you sold your stock in Magellan Express a few years back,” she said dryly.

“My ex-partner talked enough for both of us,” he recalled. “There wasn’t much for me to add.”

And of course, he’d had little enough to say to the media when his wife and son went missing two years earlier. At the request of the police, he’d made the televised pleas for anyone with any knowledge of their whereabouts to call the numbers that flashed on the screen, but beyond that, he’d been silent. His reluctance to speak on camera about his family had led some to speculate that perhaps he’d had a hand in their disappearance, but no one who knew him took that seriously. Robert had always worn his heart on his sleeve, and even now, speaking publicly about Beth and Ian was acutely painful, something he’d rather not...